How does Geelong’s man of the people mayor Darryn Lyons stack up against these colourful councillors?

HE may have had his pecs surgically inserted, but how does our flamboyant mayor stack up against these globally famous colourful city hall residents?

Danielle Cahill

HeraldSunFebruary 19, 20141:40pm

Is Geelong Mayor Darryn Lyons — seen here leading the charge for the town’s bid to build armoured cars — really the wackiest mayor in the world?Source:News Limited

THERE was a time when those who donned the robes and wore the heavy chains at city hall came from an endless parade of serious-looking politicians with mutton chops and a sense of gravitas.

But in recent years, a slew of colourful men with larger than life personalities and controversial private lives have been elected mayor in municipalities the world over.

News_Module: POLL: WORLD's WACKIEST MAYOR

Turns out, city hall is far from stuffy. So is the election of former paparazzi king Darryn Lyons in Geelong part of a global trend in colourful mayors?

And how does the pint-sized entrepreneur stack up against other eccentric headline-grabbing mayors?

News_Image_File: Toronto Mayor Rob Ford faces reporters at City Hall in Toronto after news of the video which appeared to show him smoking crack cocaine, first surfaced. Picture: AP Photo/The Canadian Press, Frank Gunn

Rob Ford — Toronto

ROB Ford captured the global media’s attention when he admitted smoking crack cocaine in a casual press conference six months after a video of his exploits were first offered for sale.

“Yes, I have smoked crack cocaine. But no — Do I? Am I an addict? No. Have I tried it? Probably in one of my drunken stupors, probably approximately about a year ago,” he told a group of reporters last November.

But it didn’t end there for the larger-than-life mayor who was one of several key players wire tapped as part of a police investigation into a Toronto gang known as the Bloods.

The Bloods reportedly took Ford’s phone and he was allegedly photographed injecting heroin and smoking crack. He later offered $5000 and a car in exchange for the original video footage.

The hefty politician also reportedly told a former female staffer that he wanted to dine on her lady parts.

While criminal charges are yet to be brought against the mayor, the sexual harassment allegations have angered him.

“I’ve never said that in my life to her. I would never do that. I’m happily married. I’ve got more than enough to eat at home,” he told reporters.

Months after the original video first surfaced, Ford attended a local festival where witnesses said he slurred his words and appeared to be “wasted”. He has also been “intoxicated” at numerous functions since taking office.

The Toronto Star published a story last year which suggested his drinking issue is an “open secret” at city hall.

News_Image_File: Toronto Mayor Rob Ford is upset at allegations he sexually harassed a former female staffer. Picture: AP Photo/The Canadian Press, Chris Young

His driver, meanwhile, has been charged with extortion over allegations that he aggressively pursued those who had the original video that appears to show his boss as high as a kite.

Ford has also been sued for defamation by a reporter who took a photo of the empty block next to his house that the mayor had planned to buy. The two got into a scuffle and Ford later suggested the reporter was taking inappropriate pictures of his young daughter and implied the man was a paedophile.

The suit was later dropped after the mayor issued a full written apology.

While he cannot be legally removed from office, his fellow councillors voted in a new mayor in his place, but Ford has promised to contest the election in October 2014 and let voters decide his fate.

In recent weeks a new video has emerged showing an enraged Ford threatening and unknown person, thought to be his brother-in-law.

News_Image_File: Michael Bloomberg was said to be furious when he found out about the data breaches at his media company. Picture: AFP /Nicholas Kamm

Michael Bloomberg — New York

FORMER New York mayor Michael Bloomberg made his fortune on the back of his global finance and business news service Bloomberg L.P, which in May last year admitted to breaching client data.

The mess began when Goldman Sachs accused a reporter at the company’s prestigious business news wire service of monitoring how clients used the 35,000 data terminals that its business arm leases for $20,000 each to major financial institutions.

The terminals give traders access to valuable financial news and the company admitted it had been monitoring how they were used by each client, right down to popular searches, key strokes and instant messages. Reporters were looking at this data to find news stories.

Bloomberg was said to be “furious” that the editorial side of his business had access to data collected by the business side of the firm.

The US Federal Reserve is investigating if Bloomberg kept tabs on how its employees used their terminals.

Founding editor in chief Matthew Winkler wrote a personal apology for the breach, which was published on Bloomberg’s website.

“Why did reporters have access to this (customer data) in the first place? The recent complaints go to practices that are almost as old as Bloomberg News,” Winkler said.

“Understanding how our clients used the terminal was more important then.

“Our client is right. Our reporters should not have access to any data considered proprietary. I am sorry they did. The error is inexcusable,” he wrote.

In 2012 the environmentally conscious mayor got staff to attach full-sized air conditioning units to the windows of his SUV on hot days as an experiment to see if the units when plugged into an outlet used less energy than the car’s own unit when the engine was idle.

Bloomberg, who began his tenor as mayor in 2002 and ended in late 2013, is also known for his colourful comments.

The ladies man reportedly ignored an author introducing himself at an event in 2012 and pointed to a female guest in a long tight dress saying “looking at the a**e on her”.

He also advised New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn to get rid of her grey hair and to stop wearing comfortable shoes.

“I was at a parade with him once and he said, “What are those?” (pointing to her riding boots) and I said, “They’re comfortable,” and he said, “I never want to hear those words out of your mouth again,”’ Ms Quinn said.

“The couple of days a week before I need to get my hair coloured he would say, “Do you pay a lot to make your hair be two colours? Because now it’s three with the grey, ” she added.

Bloomberg is said to be worth $17 billion and is generous with the women in his life. He set up a trust fund for his former wife and mother of his two children and he’s given more than $1 million to at least one former girlfriend.

News_Image_File: London Mayor Boris Johnson has a strained relationship wife Marina after he fathered two children with other women. Picture: AP

Boris Johnson — London

THE famously eccentric conservative London mayor isn’t short on colourful sound bites and his life outside of politics is constantly in the news.

The married blond politician, who likes to play the bumbling buffoon in public, had a long-running one with columnist Petronella Wyatt that saw her suffer one miscarriage and abort another child he reportedly fathered. More recently he has also had a love child with Helen Macintyre, which ended her relationship with partner Pierre Rolin.

His infamous philandering ought to be a matter of public debate, according to the judges who last year presided over an appeal for a super injunction against the Daily Mail, bought by Ms Macintyre whose young daughter bares a striking resemblance to Johnson.

While the paper is prevented from publishing images of the toddler, it can discuss the affair, which the judgment states is “a public interest matter which the electorate was entitled to know when considering his fitness for high public office”.

His flashes of wit and sharp tongue have also filled newspapers over the years and he is a big fan of Australia.

“My chances of being PM are about as good as the chances of finding Elvis on Mars, or my being reincarnated as an olive,” he once said.

News_Image_File: Mayor of London Boris Johnson, whose adviser Lynton Crosby used to work for John Howard, is a big fan of all things Australian. Picture: Ella Pellegrini

“I think I was once given cocaine, but I sneezed so it didn’t go up my nose. In fact, it may have been icing sugar,” is another memorable Boris-ism.

In August last year on a trip to the Northern Territory he famously kissed a baby crocodile named after young Prince George.

In the past week, he has gotten into a stoush with actor George Clooney who suggested the Elgin Marbles and other Greek treasures currently on display in the British Museum should be returned to their country of origin.

“Someone urgently needs to restore George Clooney’s marbles. Here he is plugging a film about looted Nazi art without realising that Goering (Nazi politician Hermann Goering) himself had plans to plunder the British Museum. And where were the Nazis going to send the Elgin marbles? To Athens!”

“This Clooney is advocating nothing less than the Hitlerian agenda for London’s cultural treasures. He should stuff the Hollywood script and stick to history.’’

THE founder of British paparazzi agency Big Pictures last year successfully ran for mayor on a platform of change with a focus on youth and employment.

With the slogan “Giddy Up” and a focus on younger voters via social media, Lyons was elected last November.

The former Excess Baggage star admits to going under the knife for a procedure called contouring which he says is “basically it’s the male version of a boob job.”

A month after his win, the mayor’s fiancee Elissa Friday posed for photographs in a newspaper dress made from the pages of The Geelong Advertiser.

But the extraordinary life of the mayor with the multicoloured mohawk began years before he reached city hall. In his autobiography he admitted to getting up close and personal with Peter Andre’s former wife Katie Price’s assets.

“I ended up lying on top of her, my face between those magnificent pillows. “Not a bad life,” I remember thinking. “Giddy up! I’ve died and gone to heaven,” he wrote in Mr Paparazzi.

He also admitted to partying pretty hard when he first hit the big time in the UK and using cocaine.

“There were a**holes all around me and I was binge-drinking, hitting the casinos — everything I could do to damage myself,” he wrote in Mr Paparazzi.

“One afternoon (a colleague had come over) to look at my computer and found me hiding behind a tree wearing my flak jacket and helmet, yelling for him to ‘get down’,” he said.

After waking up to a serious nose bleed and bloodstained pillow, “I told myself that unless something changed I was going to lose everything and die.”

During his years in the UK he photographed and sold pictures of celebrities such as Princess Diana and David Beckham with nanny Rebecca Loos, plus he covered the Bosnian war in the 1990s.

Aside from the TV documentary series about his picture agency called Paparazzi, he has also appeared on Excess Baggage Australia, Celebrity Big Brother, Hells Kitchen, Top Gear, Sally Morgan: Star Psychic, Tycoon, Dragon’s Den, The Fame Review, Tattoos,$ellebrity, Deadline and I’m A Celebrity ... Get Me Out Of Here!

His 30-year-old fiancee appeared in the UK version of Beauty and the Geek.